


Hideaway

by morphogenesis



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Incest, Multi, My motives are complex, No VLR, No ZTD, Polyamory Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:27:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28020891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphogenesis/pseuds/morphogenesis
Summary: Akane and Aoi are living a quiet life in the suburbs when Junpei shows up, looking for reconciliation. It's complicated from there.
Relationships: Kurashiki Akane/Kurashiki Aoi/Tenmyouji Junpei
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Hideaway

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in 2013 for Polyamory Big Bang on LJ. Not edited, obviously this isn't for you if incest isn't your thing. I have a real fondness for this fic and was like, why not finally share it under my real handle. Partially inspired by "All That Long Hair in the Grave" by kaikamahine, only I'm not as smart as Elizabeth.

It wasn't long after they moved in that she began to feel like she was burning up, every day.

She'd wake up in the morning with a perceived flush on her cheeks and forehead and chest, and she took her own temperature seemingly every morning until one day her brother rapped on the bathroom door and offered to read her the definition of "psychosomatic" off his phone.

Akane ignored him and pressed into the soft flesh under her eye, probing for the source in her head, wishing it would all leave her alone, as her face stayed red and her tongue dried.

The next morning she woke up sweltering, despite the draft in her room, and unbuttoned her nightshirt, forced herself to take deep breaths despite the seeming alarm bells in her head, Incineration will begin in...

When the morning light of her east-facing room was slipping away from her, disappearing through the slats of her blinds, Aoi came into her room and sat on the edge of her bed. She didn't bother to cover her chest, her shirt long since discarded.

They didn't speak, he simply grabbed her left arm and pulled it into his lap, tracing meaningless patterns into the palm of her open hand, similar to what he used to do when they were kids and had to pass time waiting for the bus.

He traced where the lines in her palm triangulated, and she burned until she slept, and woke up in the blue-dark of evening with him still holding her hand.

\---

Despite his grumbled protestations, he left to get her medicine from the local grocery -- the one he had to actually drive to because everything within walking distance shut down by 9 -- later that night.

Her fevers were more than likely psychosomatic, because they'd done everything right and she was still alive and corporeal after the second game. She wasn't in the incinerator anymore, there was no reason she should be getting so sick...

It happened in the medicine aisle, the way his chest suddenly contracted and his stomach fell out like the ground was spinning under his feet, and a second later, the rows of boxes and bottles began to coalesce in front of his eyes, beginning to form a wall.

No.

He reached out and instead of the shelf and cardboard pillboxes, he felt a metal wall, watched it shift in front of him until the rest of the store fell away and he drove his other fist into the incinerator door --

"Sir!"

Akane's alive, he thought, clinging to it like a line at sea, trying to keep from going under in delusions he hadn't felt since before --

The wall came back, and a warning blare from the alarm sytem started.

No! He clawed at the wall, feeling sense memories of the skin around his nails splitting, nails breaking, the sting of bleeding fingers coming back, as he tried to get to his sister, about to burn alive --

Someone jerked him backwards, by his collar, and in an instant he saw the flourescent lights of the store as his head flew back, and then whoever had grabbed him let him go.

"Sir, you need to leave before we call the police," Some manager was yelling at him, getting higher at the end, their face pinched in a way that suggested they had no way how to handle the man who'd just started furiously attacking their shelving.

He blinked, unable to say anything or move, until one thought surfaced: I'm not on the Gigantic.

Then a calm suffused him, and he could move again, free of whatever spell had been trapping him almost ten years in the past.

He brought a hand up under his jack collar, feeling his pulse in his neck, a grounding habit he'd developed for whenever these incidents happened, and it was racing.

The manager, and several customers who'd gathered, were still looking at him.

He turned around and left, without buying anything, a small hitch in his step that he tried to shrug off with an aggressive stride.

He wasn't on The Gigantic.

Akane was safe at home.

And he'd have to find another store.

\---

She's not in the house when he comes home -- later than he said he'd be, because he had to drive around for awhile until he felt his pulse approach an acceptable heart rate, until the rush of air from all the open car windows had brought him back to the streets of the Pennsylvanian suburb they were in.

He can tell because the house is absent of any of the signs of "Akane existing in a space" -- no lights have been left on upstairs, no water running for way longer than it needs to be in the bathroom or kitchen, no footsteps of her pacing in her bedroom.

The anxiety builds again until he calls "Akane!" and hears "Out here!" from the direction of the kitchen, and walking in he feels a draft and sees the door to the back porch open.

Akane is sitting on the edge of the patio, legs dangling off the side, with a rotund cat sitting next to her. The cat lives somewhere in the neighborhood -- she's too clean and robust-looking to be a stray, he keeps telling Akane, so they can't take her -- and likes to beg for food when she can waddle into their backyard from the driveway around the side of the house.

"Don't you have a fever?"

Akane keeps petting the cat before answering, scratching the purring animal's cheek. "You said it was psychosomatic."

"Don't be cute," he mumbled, but instead of dragging her inside like he wanted to he shut the door behind him and walked over to sit down next to her, shoes scuffing along the old patio that seemed to be splintering under their feet. It hadn't been properly taken care of in years -- the house had languished for awhile before they swung in with fake IDs, polished English, and a lot of cash up-front -- and probably needed to have boards replaced, be sanded, refinished. It was an idea for the summer -- Aoi wasn't about to do anything for it in barely-November, when snow would be here in a month.

The cat, which Aoi called Fatty and Akane liked to call Anpan ("red bean bread cat," for reasons that should be obvious to anyone seeing the cat), left Akane's attentions and padded over to his side inside, greeting him with a friendly "prrrb!"

'They can tell who doesn't like them,' Akane had told him once, with a small smile, and he'd told her to kick the stupid thing out.

Now he just stroked the top of her ears, feeling her purr against his palm.

"I got your medicine. Sorry it took awhile." He held up the plastic CVS bag as an apology.

Without speaking, Akane leaned against his shoulder, and let out a big sigh like she'd been holding it in for awhile.

"What's on your -- ah," The cat had walked into his lap and was kneading his thigh before sitting down and curling up on him, head tucked against her left flank. "What is it doing?"

"She likes you. She wants to sleep," Akane said without looking up or raising her head off his shoulder.

"I don't like it. Its claws are near my junk,"

"Don't get up suddenly then."

"Akane!"

She just laughed at him, like she always had.

They just sat quietly for awhile, Akane looking distant and far-away like she usually did when she was walled-off somewhere he couldn't reach.

Aoi had gotten very used to being alone with her and 'alone' with her in the past 10 years, and usually what worked to bring her back down was this: He leaned over (as well as he could with the cat sleeping on him) and kissed her forehead.

She blinked, and he watched her eyes clear up, coming back so slowly, before she looked at him like she was measuring something, and sat up straight, and leaned over to put a hand on his face and kiss his mouth.

She hadn't kissed him since their first night here, with most of their furniture still shipping from storage and the only thing they had was a mattress they brought, on the floor of the living room where they dropped it when they took one look at the narrow stairs and its nonexistent turning space and went "hell no."

They'd both flopped out there on the same queen, a topsheet between them and the pad, and mismatched blankets for both cover and pillows. It was early April and the temperature had unexpectedly dropped for a week, in a way that half the locals went "Don't like Pennsylvania weather? Wait five minutes and it'll change," and half of them acted as if it were the end of the world, and he could still feel Akane's body heat through the knit, beside him.

She was feverish, and shivering at the same time, and it was...well. She was his baby sister. He rolled over and put his arms around her, felt her start to relax and tuck her head into his shoulder.

And then she kissed him on the neck, too deliberate to have other intentions.

And -- and Aoi will always doubt himself for this, what he would have done if she'd stopped there, why he didn't say anything then and what that said about his intentions with everything -- when she did it again, he reacted, canting his neck to give her more space, and when she moved up and kissed him on the mouth, he put his hand on the back of her head, grabbing her bottom lip between his teeth, appreciating the soft gasp she made.

She took her time, unsure and new at first, laughing when they bumped heads or when her hair got in the way, and it kept on that way for awhile, just kissing, including one time where she grabbed his face and brought him back, pushing her tongue in his mouth, exciting but also sloppy and that finally made him laugh when he pulled back. "Slow down, tiger," and then he went back and showed her, slowly, what to do.

The arousal grew slowly, and, er, he wasn't exactly used to girls, at least, and wasn't really sure how to read the signs besides her noises until she rolled them over and when half-lying on his chest didn't work, let out a small nervous giggle before straddling his waist, rolling her hips on him while she leaned down to kiss him again.

Despite her efforts to push it further, they didn't do more than kiss and awkwardly grind against each other until he rolled her off, mumbling "Get off me, stop," and then rolled onto his side, choking back down the burn in his gut. Cold feet. She was his sister.

But, what else did he expect, he thought. What kind of brother asks his sister to run away with him and stay with him forever, be a home, be a family?

The question came surging back to him in the moment, as he held her back on the porch and kissed her back.

They hadn't talked about that night, done anything since then, but now she pulled away from him and looked at him with a set, determined expression, and said, "Hey, come upstairs with me tonight."

His thoughts flashed to the condoms in the medicine cabinet that had appeared there in the week or so after that night, the only sign Akane gave him that she was still thinking about it. He was revulsed by the idea, but moreso by his own culpability in it.

He paused, before mumbling something unintelligible, and then said, "Oh. Okay," before he could think.

Akane put her hands under Anpan and removed her from his lap, setting her down on the porch, where the disgruntled cat laid down again.

Then she stood up and took him by the hand and lead him up to her room.

It was better and it was awkward and it was natural all at once, and after awhile he stopped worrying about what kind of brother, what kind of person this made him if he'd asked her to begin with and was now upset she was following up on it.

He loved her.

It was the most natural thing in the world. It was what he wanted.

And it would be okay.

\---

What he wanted had been to run away with her and live somewhere where nobody knew them.

They started out as vague references he'd make when pressed. They didn't like to talk about what was going to happen after The Plan -- the Second Nonary Game. They didn't want to get their hopes up in case they failed, she said once, and then immediately took it back once she saw the look on his face.

Sometimes she talked about other things, like what he could do when he didn't need to be there for her anymore, how he'd probably leave her someday and she'd owe him forever.

"Stop it, you don't owe me," he'd said, gripping her shoulders so hard she could feel him digging into her bones.

She breathed, looking into his eyes and feeling roiling, underneath a pane of smoked glass, under waves, that separated them. She didn't know what to say, and eventually he pulled her into a crushing hug, and they didn't talk like that anymore.

At least, not for the longest time.

"What would you do if you could go anywhere?" she asked him one day, on a flight to Nevada.

Looking out the window, watching the browns and reds below blend into great creases and shifts in the land, he put his hand over hers and said, "I'd go somewhere with you and we'd have a normal life."

That was when Akane became very interested in maps.

When she was tired, mentally, emotionally, physically, she'd look through a huge softcover atlas and circle places on the map she'd take her brother, when they had all the time in the world.

She watched Aoi get older and meaner and harder and leaner and work himself to the bone for her, and she circled places on the world map with purple ink.

Places that were pretty or new or cosmopolitan or modern or rural or stark.

Places where young suspiciously wealthy orphans wouldn't be out of place.

Places where nobody had ever heard of Cradle Pharmaceuticals or the Missing 16.

And on his 24th birthday she gave him the atlas and told him to choose his present.

Nine years of his life then for nine years of hers later was her final offer.

It didn't seem so unfair.

And more than a year later, after that night spent first on the porch and then in her bed, Akane didn't have any more fevers.

She woke up feeling clear-headed and cool, and started taking walks, something she'd been avoiding since they'd moved in months ago because she could never shake the feeling that everybody was looking at her, knew who she was and that people were looking for her.

Swarthmore, Pennsylvania was a quiet neighborhood though, where people didn't look twice at her besides at her brother's dumb too-high-profile-for-the-area car. ("I just want one nice thing," had been his defense when he bought it.) Her brother's choice started to make more and more sense the longer they stayed there -- they could afford it for a long time; nobody cared who they were or were concerned with anything that had happened in the Southwest (American regionalism had been something Aoi had been counting on when he picked the place, along with the fact that nobody would look for them in America because America didn't care about Japanese criminals who'd hurt Japanese people, even if it had taken place in America -- also correct).

She became familiar with the place, her favorite being the park they were down the street from with the artificial wetland where she spent a day trying to catch frogs and snakes, being 12 again and coming home muddy, where an exasperated Aoi made her undress on the back porch before she could come in the house. (When he got distracted by touching the wet and full curve of her hip and tracing where her underwear stopped and her skin began, she pulled him against her and dragged her dirty hands down the back of his shirt, and the noise he made scared Anpan into the bushes.)

She was more courageous than her brother, who spent a lot of time making excuses for why he wasn't going out alone. Having a petty argument was an indulgence, and she needled him about being a hermit every chance she got until he asked her out to dinner.

Specifically, a date, though he refused to call it that.

On a Friday evening, she put on a dress she had bought but never worn, and heels that made her feel tall but wobbly.

Though he'd seen her at every awkward stage of her life (and Akane tried not to let that kill her enthusiasm for this new development in their relationship), Aoi still gave a wolf whistle when he saw her at the top of the stairs.

"You own a suit?" she said in a mock-incredulous tone as she descended. "I didn't know you knew how to clean up."

"Don't give me that when you can't even walk straight in your shoes." But he was smiling.

When they were younger and used to have fancy dinners in an attempt to schmooze people they needed for their plan, they always would laugh at each other and their attempts to look like adults when they felt more like children than ever in overlarge vests and misapplied makeup.

Tonight was different. Tonight was just for them.

And though they sat with their backs to the wall of the restaurant in the city, eyes half on the door and half on each other, they had fun, and later that night, lying in bed next to him, they finally started talking about ways they could make this place feel like home.

Her brother started joining her on walks, moved into her bedroom, and got less shifty, less quick to worry when every little thing happened.

"Is this real?" he asked her one night, face buried in her stomach, sounding high and giddy at the edges. "Like, it can keep going?"

The vulnerability in his voice and the way he touched her like she was this previous unbelievable thing made her heart ache. She reached down and ran her hands through his hair.

"Yeah, I promised. I love you."

"I love you, too," he breathed. "I'm really glad we did this."

"Me, too."

Sometimes she was bored, with so little constructive to do, especially after the previous nine years of constant activity and stress, but there were worse things than being bored. They were alive and they were safe.

If they only had each other, then she guessed they had to make it a big life.

What she didn't know was how little peacetime they had left.

November was a bad month for them in general, especially early in the month when the anniversaries of both Nonary Games were.

For the first time, they were going to do something other than lay around sullenly the day of or be quiet and withdrawn into personal worlds. Akane had wanted to let it go by as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, but her brother said the day they cheated death twice was worth celebrating, so they agreed that when the nights came they were going to get alcohol and the local Mediterranean takeout and watch stupid movies.

It was a week before the anniversaries when there was a knock at the door.

As a general rule, she always let Aoi get the door unless he was indisposed, so when she heard his shuffling footsteps across the entryway, everything seemed fine, she didn't think to catch her breath before what was about to be the last restful moment of her near future.

An annoying part of being an esper is that just because you can see the future doesn't mean you always do when it will be the most convenient for you, and that's why Akane was entirely surprised (and jumped half a foot) when the next thing she heard was her brother swearing and the crash-thump of someone being tackled.

\---

The crash immediately sent Akane into Danger Mode, and she rushed from the study to top of the steps, making a stop at the linen cabinet along the way to grab something: the golden revolver, hidden on the top shelf.

“Aoi!”

No response. He either couldn't hear her or couldn't respond.

Gun raised, she rushed down the steps, her stomach on fire, and rounded the corner, through the kitchen, and across the living room to the entryway.

Her brother was pinning somebody to the carpet, one knee digging into their ribs, holding them down with his body weight. His face was red, and she could see his mouth moving but couldn't make out what he was saying.

“Aoi,”

“Go back upstairs,” he said in a dangerously low voice.

“Akane?” the person – a man – tried to lean up to see her, and Aoi shoved him back down with a growl, muttering something else to him that sounded like 'Get the fuck out of here.'

She couldn't see the other man's face, but she did recognize that voice, and she lowered the gun, stepping closer to see who it was:

Junpei Tenmyouji.

Junpei.

Jumpy.

She was sure her mouth was open, as she felt like she'd been struck, her insides melting with the shock and horror of seeing him again, like this, of him seeing her like this, a stranger with a revolver for his head and nothing good to say to him.

This transformed her for a moment to a little girl, hindbrain and id both urging her to grab him and shake him and hold him all at the same time, but then her intelligent mind took over, the thing that kept her alive for the past decade, and she didn't lose her grip on the gun.

“Junpei, who sent you here?”

“Nobody. Hh, Kanny --”

“Did you come here to kill us or turn us in?”

“No, no --”

She walked over to them, getting down on one knee while her brother still held him down so she could look at his face, the way his chest heaved and his arms shook from the strain of trying to get out from under Aoi, his eyes wide and desperate. “Think hard: Why are you here, then? Tell the truth.”

He swallowed, one eye on the gun still in her hand, and she saw the tremble in his jaw and was reminded of the way he looked in Building Q: the thin veneer of calm over shaking nerves, like a rabbit always just dodging traps, and how he looked less like that now, his eyes rolling in his head for a moment as he tilted it to look into her face.

“I wanted to see you. I have to talk to you.”

When they'd first left Nevada, she would actually fantasize about this moment, revising until it was perfect to her fantasy logic: Of the perfect contrivance that allowed them to meet again and hash everything out. She couldn't hope to hear him say 'I forgive you,' but 'I don't think you're a monster,' would have been acceptable.

He could find her or she could find him or they'd just...run into each other, perfect and easy like that, and everything would work out for the sake of closure.

She owed him that much. She wanted that much for them both.

“Aoi,”

Her brother slightly turned his head toward her, showing he was listening, without taking his focus off of Junpei.

“Come on, let him go. He won't hurt us.”

“You don't know that.”

“Yes I do! Let him go.”

She stood up and stepped back, turning the safety on the gun before aiming it at Junpei's chest as her brother got off him. “No sudden moves. Get up slowly, with your hands where I can see them.”

He did this, his face running from shocked to confused to hurt to affected apathy in the span of time it took him to stand up and put his hands up. His mouth quirked in the way it did before he was about to say anything lame, and he started: “Femme fatale? Kanny --”

“Stop it,” she said shortly. “My name is Akane. I can give you an hour. If you want to stay you have to stay cuffed until we decide we can trust you.”

“What?”

“You can accept my terms or you can leave.”

“Okay, fine, whatever – ow,” he said as his arms were roughly yanked behind his back and his wrists locked together by Aoi.

Akane lowered the gun for what she hoped would be the last time, and motioned with her head for her brother to lead Junpei into the living room.

They sat across from each other, Junpei on the couch and the Kurashikis awkwardly perched on the same chair, Akane on the seat, Aoi on the arm, and all watched each other for a moment of silence.

Her hand rested on top of the gun, sitting on the other arm of the chair. Occasionally, Junpei's eyes wandered to it like he couldn't believe it was really there and who it was being held by.

Her brother was tense as a wire beside her, and she ran her left hand down his upper arm, squeezing slightly to let him know she was there.

He shifted away from her grasp, and she frowned at him before turning back to Junpei.

“How did you find us?”

He looked down at his lap and shuffled his feet, running one shoe over his opposite ankle, before answering dryly: “Little bird.”

“Don't fucking --” Aoi started spitting, but Akane put a hand on his chest.

“If you want to be here, tell me the truth, Junpei.”

Me, not us. She prayed he'd listen if she framed it as a plea from her specifically. She could keep Aoi back but she couldn't keep him calm.

He mumbled at first, and then repeated clearer: “It was easier once I found out the name of the organization you guys used to set up the second Nonary Game.” He looked at Akane and smirked. “'Crash Keys,' really? That's cute. Someone who used to do contract work for you helped me figure out how to track your personal expenditures so I could find your location. And, uh, after that it was just a matter of finding the right house in the right neighborhood, which was paper combing. It was boring. And you're sloppy.”

The siblings both shot each a look that exchanged accusations of 'you did this.' Junpei was right; for criminals and leaders, finding ways to privatize and manage their money in secret hadn't been a high priority. Not as important as having it was. They had been sloppy in the past – possibly enough for his description of events to line up.

That was embarrassing but plausible. She wouldn't push him on the issue.

“Why did you look for me?”

Junpei opened his mouth, closed it, and then spoke. “Isn't that obvious? You – After – I...”

He closed his eyes, shaking his head quickly, and swallowed again, like his mouth was dry. “I had to see you, Akane. After everything that happened, I had to talk to you and find out what the hell happened in there. And why.”

Aoi snorted.

“Bite me,” Junpei said, spitting the syllables at him.

Akane leaned back in the chair and rubbed her temples with one hand. “Both of you stop it. Aoi, untie Junpei and then go somewhere else.”

“What? Why?”

“I want to talk to him without you two trying to start a fight every other minute,” she said in a tone that suggested she wasn't open to arguments.

His shoulders sank from their tense position, and she knew she'd won. He wouldn't argue.

He got up and stalked across the room, unlocking the cuffs and nearly ripping them off his body, and walked back to her, stopping briefly to lean over and whisper in her ear: “Call me if anything seems weird.”

“Take this.” She handed him the revolver, which he looked at and then at her incredulously. “I mean it. I don't need it anymore.”

He took it from her hand and walked off stiffly.

She heard his footsteps on the stairs but she didn't hear them fading as if he were going up them. Fine. He could camp there if he wanted.

Once they were alone, she and Junpei didn't look at each other, quiet and absorbed in the moment before she said: “You start.”

“...Really?” he finally said after a long pause. “You don't have anything to say to me? 'Hi, Junpei, how you doing? Sorry I put you in a death game, but hey it sure is nice to see you again!'”

“What?”

“It would be a good start.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I'm sorry for what I did to you and everyone else who was innocent.”

His face fell, and the rest of him seemed to, too. Suddenly the challenging person was gone and he looked more like a kicked kid. “...I thought that would make me feel better than it does.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them, and looked at him. “I don't think I can do anything to make you feel better, but I really wish I could.”

Their eyes met and they held the gaze for a moment. It felt like a more productive conversation than this one was guaranteed to be.

“I understand a lot of what happened back there, now. I, uh, even read some books, haha. But it's still weird to see you and know you're here because...because of me. And some bullshit sci-fi theory. Uh, you're real right? You're not a ghost?”

She let out a dry laugh. “I'm sure.”

He looked like he was contemplating what he was about to say, and then: “...Fuck math. I never liked it.”

The laugh she let out was a little hysterical, like someone had popped a bubble inside her that had released pure helium in her gut. “Fuck math.”

They moved away from the heavy stuff to bullshit for awhile, talking about literally anything else (“A golden gun, really?” “It was my brother's idea, I swear.”).

He fidgeted a lot more than he used to, was always touching his neck or his face or shaking his head or worrying the edges of his shirt.

She wondered where it came from, but she didn't ask. She was afraid of the answer.

One of her biggest pieces of the fallout she'd left in her own wake was sitting in front of her, trading news and jokes with her.

The afternoon light was quickly fading into a dying, fiery orange through the windows by the time she noticed the time.

“It's been way more than an hour...” she said, and Junpei yanked the edge of his sleeve further down his right arm, covering his palm.

“Yeah.” His mouth quirked sourly. “I guess I should leave.”

She was speaking before she was finished thinking, spurred by a sudden jolt of her heart: “You don't have to leave.”

Junpei looked up at her, eyes wide with the effect of epiphany.

\---

"I will make him understand, okay? And then we can go back to being how we were."

Aoi seemed unconvinced, leaning away from her as she tried to pull him closer to her with her hands on his shoulders.

“This is a terrible idea. We cannot host somebody who has a clear and present grudge against us and more importantly managed to track us down. He won't even name who he spoke to! You hope he wants to be your boyfriend again? Are you thinking with your --”

She put a hand over his mouth, pointing at him sternly with the other hand. “I can handle it. And I can still trust Junpei. So trust me.”

She took her hand off his mouth so he could speak, and he grabbed her hands with his own and held them. “Akane, it's all over. Let it be. You can't fix this with him.”

His face was pained, brutally honest for a moment now that they were alone in the upstairs hallway, while they left Junpei shut in the study with the door locked.

She kissed him, first on the mouth and then softly all over his face, trying to smooth out all the worry there, and then pressed her forehead to his.

They stood there, having a quiet moment, before she let him go and walked back to the study and knocked on the door.

“Still there?”

“Yes.”

Behind her, she heard Aoi retreat into their room and shut the door.

A cold war on two fronts for her to fight.

Awesome.

“I'm coming in, do your pants quickly,” she said, teasing, before unlocking the door.

Junpei was sitting on top of the bench sofa's back, his back leaning against the wall, head barely skimming the heavy frame of a photo there. (It was a painting of the wreck of the Titanic. At the time she and Aoi though it was funny to buy. In retrospect, it felt like a visual metaphor for this night in particular.) Her brother's clothes were long in the legs and sleeves on him but he looked relaxed.

“Sorry it's so messy.”

The study was half a dedicated study for them both and a half a catch-all room for things they couldn't bother to organize around the rest of the house. The bench sofa was too big for the space, and stretched almost across the entire wall, making it impossible to open the door all the way, and one had to step over boxes to get to it.

He tossed her a polite smile, an accomodating house guest. “It's fine.”

The air of politeness was strange, like they'd returned to completely safe ground after the brief moment of floundering downstairs.

She folded and refolded her hands over her stomach.

“Are you okay here for tonight? I'd let you downstairs but...old habits?”

She hoped he got what she meant and didn't take offense to 'Sorry we have to lock you up because we're paranoid control freaks.'

“It's...fine,” he said again, running a hand through his hair.

She switched tracks: “...Why don't you have your own clothes?”

He flushed. “It's a stupid reason.”

“Try me,”

He shrugged, uncomfortable, and then said quietly, “I was so nervous about seeing you I left my bag at a station along the way. I mean, I didn't exactly think this would turn into a sleepover, but I won't complain.”

She laughed at him and he looked wounded, slinking down in his seat, which caused him to slide down the back of the slick sofa and fall hard into it on his ass with a smacking sound, and she laughed harder at the look on his face.

He joined in, his laugh uncomfortable and self-conscious, then turned his attention to his clothes. “Your brother has terrible taste.”

“...He does,” she laughed. “I wish I could make an excuse for him but he just does.”

The laughter petered out, and then it was quiet, as he rolled and unrolled the long sleeves of his borrowed nightshirt and she looked out the window at a neighbor's tree, shivering in the night wind.

“Can I do anything for you before I lock up for the night?”

He mumbled something she couldn't make out.

“What?”

“I was wondering if you could sit with me for a minute.”

She tilted her head at him, raising an eyebrow.

He nearly jumped in his seat to compensate, waving his hands. “No, sorry, it's too soon --”

He was interrupted when she sat down next to him, crossing her legs at the ankle and leaning back on her arms.

They were a section apart physically, but that moment, in their own private worlds, it felt like so much further.

She had an idea when she noticed his right hand, sitting here unguarded on the unoccupied section, and that idea made her squirm internally. The thought of someone else touching her made her feel like she was having her insides pulled out through her stomach wall, but...she had nothing else to give him, nothing more she could say to make this okay or workable.

She reached out, her hand hovering in the air for a moment, by his, and he was so focused on staring at the wall he didn't notice her own struggle until she laid it down firmly over his, feeling him jolt under her touch but not moving away.

They'd shared a thousand casual incidental touches when they were kids, like childhood friends would, sometimes pushing at each other when they were fighting for the same book or seat; sometimes holding hands like that day with the rabbits; that one time she'd rather forget when they were play fighting and she slammed her palm into his mouth and blood gushed from his split bottom lip, down his chin and spotting his shirt, and when he cried, more startled than in pain, he sounded like a rabbit screaming; and a hundred other occurances that, at the time, had never occurred to her would lead her here: shaking hand over shaking hand on a couch with a man who she both knew and didn't know, like heritage, blood knowledge, knowledge of him and her and them written in the blood of multiple men and of a little girl, longer ago still.

“Don't leave tomorrow,” she said, voice rasping with emotions she didn't want to name. “I-If you leave you'll never find out what was really real about the time we were there.”

“How do you know that's why I came here?”

“I think if you wanted anything else you would have killed me, or you would have turned and left the moment I waved a gun in your face.”

“...Did you have to do that, by the way? I had enough of it from your brother back in Building Q.”

“Uh,” she said elegantly. “...We're not graceful at conflict resolution, Junpei.”

“Obviously,” he said, looking at her for the first time easily.

His hand flipped over so they were palm-to-palm, and his fingers curled around hers.

“I'll stay.”

Akane closed her eyes and her smile was small and enduring.

\---

“'It's going to be for one night, Aoi.' 'It's going to be for a little bit longer, Aoi, but then it's over, I'm done --'”

“Stop it, I don't sound like that,” Akane said, jabbing him in the back with her elbow as she stepped out of the shower. Then she rushed to wrap a towel around herself, shivering in the cross-drafts of the old bathroom.

Aoi furiously busied himself with brushing his teeth so he didn't have to respond.

It had been three days since Junpei had unexpectedly crashed their lives, and he was not about to have any of it. 'It's over,' he kept telling Akane, with increasing notes of desperation, every time he caught her looking at him with any sort of fondness or longing.

Akane was a good actress but she wasn't great, especially not when it came to Junpei, and it's not like Aoi was jealous or wanted her all to himself romantically – it would probably be better they stopped this all entirely, especially with such a risk of getting caught with a third person in the mix, although he didn't know why the thought scared him so much. Nobody could do shit to them anymore.

But he didn't want her to take Option B, to leave him for another life, breaking that promise they made with bombs and bracelets, if he was being true-blue one-hundred percent honest with himself.

If only he could find a way to say this to her. He'd mostly been coping by snapping at the third wheel for every thing he could possibly do that was construed as annoying and complaining to Akane when he could get away with it.

It was only complaints – she wouldn't tolerate actual possessiveness nor would he want to do that to her, except for one time when he was completely childish and kissed her behind the junk rack at a thrift shop they went to to find the idiot some temporary clothes. It was a huge unecessary risk and he'd taken it -- at the time his logic was perfectly sound, according to himself -- precisely to show her what he was willing to do because of it all.

She shoved him away from her and didn't speak to him until he apologized profusely later that night and promised never to do it again (and later made it up to her with his mouth).

They spent a lot of time together in the study or sitting in the living room watching lots of bullshit TV, playing video games, and talking. He had no idea how they could seemingly pick up where they left off, after what they'd done to him especially.

But he noticed them holding hands when they watched TV and swallowed hard, told himself it was short-lived, and stupid, and Akane would fuck him or get her sorry quota in or whatever it is she wanted from him and get it out of her system.

His shoulders seemed to be permanently up around his ears lately, and he woke up in the morning to an empty bed (with Junpei still locked inside the study at nights, they'd agreed it was still Safe to sleep together since it was a controlled risk) and with his jaw tight and aching.

He hadn't realized how much it was affecting him until one night he had another derealization episode. He hadn't had one since the incident in the store a month ago, but that was still twice too many.

They used to be incredibly common when he was a teenager, and he used to chalk it up to Akane's anomalous existence, some timeline shit trying to re-establish itself in his brain, and he learned what brought them on so he could avoid them: stress; sleep deprivation; pot, weirdly and disappointingly enough; and anything having to do with the first Nonary Game.

He'd hide them from Akane, knowing she had enough to worry about, but tonight he was lying next to her when it happened, staring up at the ceiling and suddenly it was the high arch of the incinerator's ceiling, with no open vent, nobody coming to save them.

They weren't always dramatic, sometimes, like tonight, he just stared into space and watched the wall between him and reality come up, knowing he couldn't do shit about it until it was over, unable to breathe to get enough air, and his fast and shallow breaths are what made Akane look over at him.

She hovered over him, hands on the bed by his chest, and looked helpless as she asked him to speak to her, not knowing that he wanted to more than anything, but just couldn't.

“...oi.” He finally registered her speaking. “Aoi.”

She stroked his face with one hand, pushing his hair back from his sweaty skin. “It's okay, hey, breathe,”

Spots swam in front of his eyes for a minute, and her voice blended in and out with warning klaxons before she finally won out, and all his breath came back to him in a harsh gasp.

She helped him sit up, and he wrapped himself around her, clinging and curling around her while she murmured things into his shoulder that were repetitive but soothing white noise.

“I'm here.”

“Don't go anywhere,” His voice broke and he hated it.

She kissed his ear. “It's safe.”

She always did think his nightmares were strictly about The Gigantic. He didn't know what else to tell her.

But she was a constant, and clinging to her in the dark, she was safety, she was land and love and the future ahead of him.

\---

Akane laid her head down on the sofa arm, eyes drooping shut as she stretched her legs out and bumped into Junpei's thigh, sitting at the far end of the couch.

He shifted, pushing back against her, and she dug her heels into his side sharply, so that he jumped and made a sound that made her pull her collar up over her mouth to hide her laughter as he called her a dick.

The stops and starts of their newly-engaged intimacy were strangely navigated, but well worth it, in her opinion. And it was nice to feel safe with somebody besides Aoi, especially since at the moment Aoi was mad at the entire world and had kept her up all night talking about everything except his actual problem: That she hadn't gotten rid of Junpei yet.

It was Day Five of his visit; yesterday had been the anniversary of the first Nonary Game, and she'd tried her best to keep to their original plans, but she could tell Aoi was withdrawn and lost in his own memories, and Junpei, after finding out the occasion, felt awkward and intrusive, and trying to eat sitting between them was a drag, so she went to bed early and woke up three hours later to Aoi crawling in beside her, breathing shallow and strained.

In addition to a brother doing a shit job at hiding his delusions by night, she was dealing with a friend who wanted all of her attention during the day, in a puppylike way that was hard to blame even when it was worse to deal with.

She knew Junpei liked to talk; she just didn't know how much until she was the only one he had to focus on. Aoi and Junpei were still loudly ignoring each other, in a way that would be hilarious if she weren't bearing the brunt of all of their passive-aggressive frustrations.

So her attention span and patience were nowhere to be found when her phone beeped with an old alarm: Crash Keys-related messages had their own tone on both of their phones. She gave an exagerrated groan and silence her phone, deciding it was Aoi's turn to deal with it (if he ever got his ass out of bed.)

“What's that?”

“None of your business,” she said and ignored the way he rolled his eyes. He could call her paranoid all he wanted – she didn't get this far by trusting someone with everything.

“Am I moving out tomorrow?” he asked her later that night, taking a huge bite of an apple (cooking was an Aoi chore and his continued petty rebellion included refusing to cook as long as Junpei was there).

“I wouldn't ask you to do that on our anniversary,”

“What?!”

She gained a more serious face and stared hard at the microwave as she said: “Tomorrow is the anniversary of the second Nonary Game.”

Junpei went dead quiet and proceeded to get incredibly into finishing his apple, watching her pick at her instant food and eat half of it, throwing the rest away.

Beyond oblique references, they hadn't spoken of the Game in the time they'd been together. Junpei couldn't and tended to completely clam up when asked about it; Akane decided early on there were more important things than pushing him to reassure her he didn't hate her.

For the moment.

\---

“Aoi! Aoooiiiiiiii --”

“What?” He shouted down the stairs rather than going to see, knowing his sister and that when she said his name like that she was in no more danger than normal, other than “I can't find something I packed,” or “I'm hungry and don't want to cook for myself.”

It took a long time to unlearn that response, -- the intrinsic belief that every time she called for him it was an emergency -- that used to make his heart start to pound and his breaths contract.

“Come downstairs, we're playing baccarat and we need a dealer.”

He sighed. “No.”

“Pleeeasseeee,”

“Hell no,”

“You suck!”

“You can do it yourself!”

“No I can't, we're both really bad at it and we want to play with a third person!”

He was still at the top of the stairs and she was still calling from out of sight, in the kitchen that the stairs lead down to around the corner, and they'd made no effort to bother to approach each other in the middle, in the way of siblings who've never shared more than the minimum of space that they could occupy without killing each other, and thus didn't need to see each other to trust that the other was there and was listening.

From the kitchen, he heard Junpei say, “It's fine, I'll do it again --”

He didn't hear Akane's response before he cut her off, jogging down the stairs. “Never mind, I'll do it.”

They sat at the kitchen table that had come with the house, water stains and scars bored into the surface that kept catching the cards when he tried to slide them to the player with the highest bid.

He'd played with Akane before – enough to know that she was a cheater and a shit card shuffler and that she infuriatingly usually bet Tie despite him telling her that wasn't the point of Baccarat – but he didn't know what to expect from Junpei. As far as he knew, there was no timeline he could remember where they'd gone through Door 5 together.

“Bet,” he said in an affected bored tone, three rounds into the game. Junpei had won two of them so far but that was such a low number Aoi was betting it was more luck than anything.

“Player,” said Junpei.

“Banker,” said Akane.

“Banker,” said Aoi. “...Why aren't we betting with money?” Seasoning shakers were standing for everyone's player chips.

“We don't have cash,” Akane said.

“What the hell are we playing for then?”

“Satisfaction,” she said with a small wink at him. Only for him. “Now shut up and deal.”

He flipped the hands over, and gave a low whistle at the Player hand – the total was eight, to the Banker's six. “Natural, Junpei wins.”

With a small chuckle, Junpei collected the hard candies Akane had been setting down instead of money for a prize.

They'd invited him to play, but spent more time talking to each other than to him, and every time Akane smiled at Junpei and made jokes with him only to be cautiously polite to him, his jaw tightened and his movements got more choppy.

Still, seeing Akane smile and talk like she was unfettered for the first time in a long time was something he should be happy about, right?

Even if it was someone else making her happy.

\---

“Come on, tell me how you did it!”

Junpei laughed as their hands locked and they struggled, pushing at each other so they sat stalemated at the kitchen table. “No.”

“You're a cheater!”

“You think so?” He sounded playful and just smirked at her, as she shoved him away before finally letting go.

They'd given up on Baccarat when he'd won too many rounds and it had just gotten sad, and her brother had gone to the living room and was loudly ignoring them both with the television turned up.

“What do you wanna do?” he said. “I'm kinda hungry --”

“I --” Suddenly it occurred to her. “Oh yeah, today is the anniversary isn't it.” She looked at her hands, away from him, as she said: “Let's go out.”

“Uh, really, you sure?”

“Yeah...unless you're gonna sell me out.”

She looked at him then and held his stare for a second, looking hard and quietly at each other, and then he laughed uncomfortably and said. “Duh, of course I won't.”

Her brother sulked when she asked him to come, and she left him to his fluff shows and the empty house.

It was so cold her hands had frozen off, turning red in the thawing heat, by the time they got home – after dinner, a walk, a stop for ice cream, like everything was normal.

“You're still not gonna tell me?” she pressed one last time as she took off her scarf and coat in the entryway

“Nope. The only hint I can give you is that Baccarat is an uncountable game, so I didn't do that!” He was smirking at her, and she pushed him at the shoulder.

“You know...” She began when they were sitting in the living room, Aoi having stalked off somewhere quiet and out of the house (he was very good at disappearing when he wanted to; Akane wasn't sure where he went when she and Junpei were alone together, and after years of constantly being aware of his movements, it made her stomach crawl). “There are a lot of things you haven't told me. Like who told you about me.”

She looked at his face while she said this, even though it made her hands shake in her lap.

Sitting across from her on the couch, Junpei blinked at her, his face shifting like shadows in water. “Does it matter?”

“Yes. Yes it does. I'll need to know so I can find out why someone gave up my information so easily, it's dangerous to --”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, his tone darkening, growing sullen.

It's dangerous to trust anybody, when you're you, he didn't say. He didn't have to. It was in the way his mouth was pulling down and the way his hands suddenly couldn't sit still.

“What, did you think...” She sighed.

“Did I what?”

She set her mouth, then said. “Did you think you were the exception to that rule?”

His eyes narrowed, his mouth furrowed. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Just answer me. Did you think when you found me I'd, like, forget about everything I did to get here and come with you?”

“So you're saying you don't trust me?”

“Should I? You won't talk to me about things that are vital to my security.”

He looked taken aback. “You know...you know that you can trust me, Kanny.”

'You don't get it.' It was the easiest thing in the world to him to believe in her and that she could be a different person, and...believe in them.

It swelled within her, grinding against her teeth, until she said: “Okay, fine. Leave.”

“...What?” A new vulnerable fear was dawining on his face.

“If I can't trust you, you have to leave.”

He bit his lip, before coming forward and touching her arm. “Okay, okay. Come on, I can tell you. Please, just don't...make me leave yet.”

He looked terrified, and she moved in, anxious and dread-filled, and then, like that first night, they were in each other's personal space, and then --

In retrospect, she wouldn't be able to determine who moved first, but the inertia of worlds, with its desperate compulsion, pushed them towards each other – is what she would say later, to explain how she kissed him, how he kissed her.

It wasn't romantic or gentle or even arousing, like the times she'd begun, disturbingly, to associate most strongly with her brother, and she even thought of Aoi in that moment, hoping he wouldn't return now, and comparing the way he just sort of...stood there and let her lead to the way Junpei pushed against her, like he was chasing her. The way their mouths and teeth clicked, until they pulled apart enough to breathe, resting their foreheads against each other.

Sometime, her arms had come up around his neck, and his were around her back, and they stood there for a moment, eyes closed, and though she could actually feel his heart through his chest, she felt shakier than him still.

“...Sorry,” he said, and she nodded against him.

“Yeah...hehe.”

“We should stop,”

“Definitely,”

She kissed him again, pressing her face against his more aggressively, feeling his dry lips and the rough spot at the base of his neck – a scar? What had even happened there?

They didn't talk about their fight earlier, moving instead to kissing and staying as close to each other as possible, moving upstairs to the study to continue making out on the couch, safe from being discovered by her brother.

“I like you,” he said in a break, as she curled into him, nuzzling her face against his jaw. He returned her touches, grabbing her hands and pulling them to his lap, holding them there. They stayed leaning into each other as he kept talking, like it was natural. “I wasn't lying – I didn't have any reason to see you other than missing you.”

“I can accept that.” She swallowed. “But what can you do now? I meant what I said earlier, too – there's no future with me.”

She didn't bother to explain herself. Her suspicions from earlier were still there, the fear that he wouldn't understand even if she told him, and she didn't want to have them confirmed.

“Do we have to think about the future? I'm here right now.” He shrugged and she grabbed his arm, huddling into him.

“I might need a day to think about it,” she said finally, tilting her head up to kiss his face again.

His thumb ran over her fingers in circles. “I can wait.”

She squeezed his hand back.

One night. She could feel safe for one night and let everything else go.

Tomorrow. She'd figure it out tomorrow – her brother, the mystery of Junpei (so foreign and so familiar all at once), and what to do from here.

\---

A door that locked from the outside felt pretty quaint at this point – Junpei was more used to picking his way out of locked rooms through puzzles, but he appreciated the change and was out of the study in a few minutes.

He waited until the normal time of night, that he usually counted out by footsteps on the stairs – the first were Akane's, deliberate and light, and the second a bit later were Aoi's, heavier and choppier like he was taking them two at a time – to break out.

If Akane caught him, she'd be disappointed; if Aoi caught him, he'd smash his face in, and he wasn't sure what he was more afraid of. Akane's trust meant something to him – something worth chasing her around the world for – but...

Hesitating in the study's doorway, he peeked around the door cautiously, listening for sounds of people in the lower story of the house, or of someone moving in either bedroom.

'It would be so much easier if they snored,' he thought to himself as he tiptoed down the edge of the steps, nearly silent.

Rounding the corner, he got excited at the prospect of getting downstairs undetected and took it too quickly, scuffing his arm on the wall. He immediately hissed and cradeled it against his chest, holding it but trying not to squeeze, willing the pain to die down.

The house was quiet, all the lights off except the constant one in the kitchen, over the sink. It had been left on every night he'd started sneaking out of his room, since the second day.

The first few nights, he'd been terrified of someone getting up and finding him, or of waking everyone up by poking around, but now he had a little more guts – and something he wanted to see in particular.

The basement door was an inconspicuous thing whitewashed the same shade as the walls, and had a few takeout menus and old flyers that they'd found noteworthy for whatever reason pinned to it. He shouldn't have been as nervous to see what was behind it as he was – it was some laundry room, probably, and damp and gray.

Avoiding the patches of the floor that tended to creak as one walked over them, Junpei crept toward it and turned the knob with agonizing slowness, listening for footsteps upstairs before he opened the door and stepped inside before shutting himself in the dark.

\---

“Is he ever leaving?”

Aoi's voice was nearly drowned out by the hiss of vegetables hitting the oiled pan, and Akane moved in to stand by his elbow, watching him flip his wrist to turn them instead of using a utensil. He seemed to have come out of his general grumpiness recently and was cooking dinner for them all.

“...I'm working on it.” She put an arm around his shoulder and leaned up to kiss his ear. “I know that's not helpful.”

“...Do you like having him here?” His voice was quiet, like hers, as much because he was down as because Junpei was upstairs, waiting for Akane to come join him in the study for some game they were going to play together.

“Yeah. He's my friend.” She pursed her mouth, watching the way he refused to look at her as he spoke.

Aoi stepped out of her grip and moved to the counter to grab a forgotten seasoning, but didn't turn back.

“Do you want to leave?”

“No? Why are you saying that?”

“Because you avoid me and keep blowing me off to do things with...him. And you seem a lot happier than you were with just me.”

“You're not boring! It's just different with you than it is with Junpei – I haven't gotten to spend real time with him in years. It's...nice.”

She left the stove and turned him around, feeling his shoulders tense up when she touched him, and she leaned in to kiss him. “Aoi, I'm not going to leave you for anyone. We're going to go on like we were.”

Relief and sadness washed over his face, and then he pressed his forehead to hers. “I wasn't worried about that.” He swallowed. “And if you wanted to, I would understand. This is a fucked-up way to live.”

She sighed, and stepped back from his touch. “You should get some sleep.” She tapped under his eyes. “I can see bags.”

“Then who would cook for your lazy ass,” he said, with no malice, nudging her out of the way so he could attend to the stove.

The dinner left her seated between both of them, pretending neither of them was trying to get closer to her than the other, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when, under the table, Aoi tried to slide his foot over hers while Junpei reached for her hand.

“I should tell him something is up between us,” she said later, leaning into Junpei on the study couch. The study had become their new hangout spot since they wanted to be alone more often now, and since Junpei couldn't let five minutes go by without touching her.

“If you want? ...Would he be upset if he found out?”

That gave Akane pause. There was a betrayal implicit in her continuing to be with both of them and informing neither, and she couldn't keep it up forever. She wouldn't. She just didn't know what to do – Aoi was here for the forseeable future, and Junpei was here for the moment, and – “I don't think so.”

Junpei played with her hair for a moment, and the warmth of his body as he sat next to her was so familiar but still so dizzying. “I'm not scared of him, hehe.” And then, more seriously: “I know we said we wouldn't talk about the future, but -- “

She cut him off: “I...”

“I mean, you told me you...can't tell me a lot of things. Okay, I have stuff I can't tell you yet either --”

“Junpei --”

“And things are weird between you and your brother. So there's some unfinished business there! And it's sooooo uncool of me to be asking you 'Where's this going?' a few days after we start doing anything, but...I guess...”

“I don't know!” The outburst surprised even herself.

Junpei looked at her, taken aback.

“There's a lot on my mind! I don't even know what I'm doing here, much less what I'll be doing in a few months! I can never be your normal girlfriend. I don't know what you want.”

Her voice had gone up at the end, and her head felt like it was full of static, and then Junpei's hands on her shoulders seemed to pull her back down, literally and figuratively.

“Sorry, I know it's a really vague queston. I guess I'm feeling antsy with...my actual living here being always up in the air? And...I know it's too soon. Sorry.”

He was looking in her eyes, with trust and warmth as usual, and it made her edgy. He trusted her and she lied to him, continually.

“Don't listen to my brother. You can stay here as long as you need to.”

“You know that isn't what I meant.”

“You're the one who said you didn't want to worry about the future.”

“Yeah, but now I do want to know. Would you ever consider being something serious with me?”

She kissed him, gently. “You can't stay with me forever. I'm...I'm never going to have a normal life.”

“Except with your brother.”

“That's different. I owe my brother a little peace for everything he did for me. I could never leave him after that. But...we still don't know what we're doing either. You know about Crash Keys?”

He nodded.

“Then you know I can't just leave all that behind after all the work I put into it. And what I've done to get here. I don't want you to follow me and...never have a peaceful life.”

“Can't that be my decision?” He looked fragile for a moment, before covering it up.

Her eyes brimmed over unexpectedly. “I want you to be safe.”

“Ah, wait, don't cry...”

His thumbs slid over her cheeks, and she tried to smile to cover it up. Then he started to kiss her face.

“Kanny, I'm sorry,” and he continued to talk to her, gently and with kindness, and she didn't speak, she couldn't.

“I'm sorry, too.”

\---

He and Akane settled for cuddling quietly, occasionally talking about things that didn't incite tears for either of them, and he loved that time, but everything was still on his mind.

Especially in light of what he'd found in the basement.

But Akane couldn't be the only one responsible for that, so he had to ask the person he suspected knew more.

See, Junpei paid attention. He knew Aoi did a lot of the chores around the house out of habit, but he seemed way more protective of the basement laundry room than necessary. He came up with excuses to run down even if Akane offered to switch the laundry around or get something from storage down there. And he locked it behind him, sometimes, when he went down.

He wasn't sure what he'd hoped to accomplish when he went downstairs while Akane got ready for bed, and found Aoi in the kitchen, fiddling with the basement door.

“Going downstairs?”

“What?” He looked over his shoulder at Junpei, cautious instead of annoyed like he usually seemed when he looked at Junpei.

Junpei was hoping he'd have something more clever to say by the time this moment came, but his chest felt like it was full of water, and it took all his focus and effort to say: “What are you working on down there?”

He watched Aoi's eyes as he said it: they widened, before he seemed to will himself nonchalant.

“Nothing,” Aoi said. He leaned into the door with one shoulder, crossing his arms defensively, trying to block it off as if he was worried Junpei would try to get past him. He'd either hit a weak point or something else was making Aoi nervous, but he seemed to have shrunk in presence in a moment.

This could work for Junpei. He widened his stance, resting his hands on his legs, and tried not to smile yet.

“Are you okay? You look uncomfortable.”

“Junpei, what are you talking about? The great experiment I'm working on downstairs is my laundry.” He rolled over to press his back to the door, avoiding looking at Junpei. “We must have fucked you up worse than Akane thought.”

“Akane? Does she know about the replica Zero lab you've got going on downstairs?”

That seemed to knock the wind out of Aoi. “She's Zero, idiot. Of course she knows.”

“Really? When I asked her about it, she had no idea.”

It was a lie. And one that would fall apart if Akane came downstairs right now and didn't seem upset or surprised at Aoi.

But Junpei didn't hear any footsteps.

Aoi looked shot through for a moment, and then he bolted.

Junpei tried to stop him, but they crashed into each other, shoving and grabbing at each other's clothing, before Aoi's hand checked his jaw and Junpei let go, stumbling backwards, and the other raced up the steps.

His head was ringing, his jaw ached, and it was terrible, what he'd tried to do, but, leaning on the kitchen table as he listened to their conversation growing louder overhead, Junpei thought one thing to himself: Gotcha.

\---

Akane was debating the merits of going to bed early because a headache was building behind her eyes when her brother slammed her bedroom door open and ran in.

“Akane.”

“Yes?”

Aoi shut and locked the door behind him, leaning against it and not looking at her. “What did he tell you?”

“What?”

He didn't seem to hear her, and was just talking over her, speeding up, tripping over himself, “I was going to tell you, I don't even mean anything by it and I never thought it would go anywhere I was just bored.”

She tilted her head. She didn't have the energy to parse this shit. “Aoi...? What did who tell me? And why are you upset?”

He turned back around slowly, looking miserable and face drawn. “...I fucked up. The basement --”

“What about the basement?”

He finally seemed to hear her, then. His mouth opened and closed as if he were just registering her words and general confusion, and then he ran a hand down his face, agitated. “...Junpei didn't tell you anything about the basement, did he?”

“No.” She folded her arms. “But now you're going to.”

His shoulders rolled forward, and he curled inward like he was trying to shrink. “I haven't been...one-hundred percent about this 'normal life' thing. I've been doing stuff in the basement. Zero stuff.”

She wasn't sure how to respond to that, and the more she tried to think of something to say the more wound up she became, and he took her silence as anger and started babbling more: about being sorry and guilty and it was harder than he'd thought to go back to normal and he wasn't even going to do anything with it he'd just wanted to have something to do --

And then, at his pitiful attempts to get her to say anything, she felt an anger rise within her that she'd never expected to direct at Aoi. It was for people who'd hurt her, and he'd never really fallen into that category before, until now.

“You said you wanted me to leave everything behind me so we could live normal lives,” she said, her voice quiet and sticking to her throat. “And I have felt so guilty, because I couldn't forget everything as easy as you did. I wanted to talk about things, but I was worried I was hurting you so much by bringing it back up that I kept it to myself.” Her eyes started to sting, and she looked away from him, gesticulating with her hands to emphasize what she said next: “And I got so sick from that! And the whole time you were telling me one thing and doing another.”

“I know, I know, Akane --”

“No. No. Tell me something else: Why am I getting messages from our employees asking what we're going to do next. I know we told them to wait to hear from us, and I didn't send any word.”

He said he'd handle any work contacts while she took a break – it was all asset management, people bugging them about retainer fees, that sort of thing, he'd said. And she'd had no reason to disbelieve him until she started reading her backlog of work messages.

“Yeah, I did tell some of them to start moving. I was going to tell you later, that...we – I – wanted to look into this Free the Soul shit.” He was shaking his head. “We were never going to leave here. Nobody was going to come looking for us. It was just...sending people out to do stuff in our stead. You said yourself you didn't want to sit on your ass forever and do nothing with the resources we gathered. That we could be doing more to protect the potential of the future.”

And she would have gladly done all of that, he was right.

“But you can't hide things from me! You can't take things that I helped you build and do whatever you want with them while I'm safe at home with you!”

“I liked having this time with you. And I was going to tell you, but I wanted some more time before...”

They looked at each other, staring across the room, before he finished: “Before you went back to being Zero and I didn't have my sister anymore.”

She sat down on the bed and held her head in her hands. She took deep breaths, trying not to cry because he would try to hug her and smooth everything over and make it about how he was going to make it up to her. She wanted to be angry with him no matter how much he was hurting too.  
She felt him settle onto the bed behind her, and they didn't speak.

There was a knock on the door.

“Guys? Are you okay?”

“Yes. I'll meet you in a minute,” she said.

There was a pause, like Junpei was waiting, and then she heard his footsteps retreating.

“So Junpei made you think I knew?”

“Yep.”

“So how does he know?”

“Beats me. Has he ever disappeared while you two were hanging out?”

“No. The only way he'd have enough time to snoop would be when we were asleep, but...”

She started. “We're idiots. He played both of us.”

Aoi asked her what she meant, but she didn't answer him, just ran out of the room and into the study.

Junpei smiled when he saw her, and started to get up to hug her, but she pulled away from him.

“You're a liar. What do you want from me?”

“Huh? I'm not --”

“You've been able to sneak around the house while we're asleep.”

He went still, shocked. “I wanted to know more about you two.”

“Why, because you work for someone who wants to know about us?”

“Why do you keep jumping to that?”

“Because I have to think about this to stay alive. That's been my life for the past decade. And you have cause to hate both of us. So, I think what you did was find someone who could do what you couldn't do: Find us.”

Junpei seemed to be holding his breath. “I didn't do this because I hate you. I was honest about why I wanted to find you: I missed you. And...because SOIS wouldn't help me, I found people who would. But they don't want to see you dead! You guys don't work in...the same business.”

“Tell me who it is,” she said, dead serious.

He rolled up his sleeve that had been covering his right arm, the same arm he favored when they were together and went rigid when she touched it, and showed her.

The skin was scarred, but they weren't random wounds. They were carvings – deliberate lines and shapes in his flesh that must have taken time and blood.

Akane had seen them before, on the arms of members of a transnational crime group they had worked with, trading money and people for help meeting connections in high places, and, most notably, rigging the auction for Building Q. The working relationship had been decent, but it was nowhere she wanted to see her friend working.

“Junpei, no,” she said, her voice cracking and hurt.

She lost track of what happened next, as she mostly froze and when he got up and put his arms around her, she didn't react, not even when her brother came in and they started yelling at each other. At some point Junpei let her go and he and her brother got in each other's faces, and she sat back on the couch and watched them, not hearing anything they were saying.

“Stop it, guys,” she finally said. “We need to talk.”

They both looked at her. Junpei's hand was fisted in Aoi's shirt and Aoi's hand was gripping his wrist, their faces a few inches apart and flushed.

Akane gestured more firmly for them to sit down.

They all sat on the floor, Akane keeping them both at a distance with her back to the sofa, and she looked between the two of them, and started to speak.

She started in April, and though Aoi shot her a last-second pleading look, she didn't skip that first encounter on the mattress. Both Aoi and Junpei covered their faces when she divulged the further incest, and then how she'd been with both of them simultaneously, the worries she'd been keeping from both of them.

She rested her head on her knees when she was done.

Someone said, “Oh my God,” but nobody started yelling. After the previous drama, she was glad for a little quiet, even when everything was more fucked up now.

“We're all fucked up,” Aoi finally said.

“You two are, maybe,”

“Shut up,”

“Well, I'm not the one fucking my sister! What?!”

“I'm tired, can we all just...go to sleep.” Akane was drained. “Unless you want to leave now, Junpei, then I can help you --”

“I mean...” Junpei rubbed the back of his neck, still not looking at her, embarrassed. “I was going to tell you earlier, but that group might still be looking for me. I left unexpectedly. So I have nowhere else to go.”

“I'd look out for you.” Akane rubbed at her eyes. “I'm still mad at you, though.”

“Yeah, I can leave --”

“No, it...just means you'd have to make it up to me.”

She put her hand out to the side, offering it to him.

He took it slowly, their fingers lacing back together.

Aoi groaned.

“You jealous?” Junpei said, giving a smirk that just looked deeply uncomfortable.

“This is bullshit, but...Akane, if it makes you happy, we can let him stay.”

She held out her other hand, and when Aoi didn't take it, leaned over awkwardly and took it off his lap, squeezing it.

“Don't be grumpy. You owe me too for lying to me.”

“...Yeah.”

There were going to be a lot more conversations in the near future: boundaries and deciding where to go from here and, most exhausting of all, needing to hash out the hurt feelings and mistakes made between all of them, but Akane could handle that.

She had time.

\---

Maintaining two relationships at once turned out to be easier than expected with two men who were still crazy about her and seemed to get off on competing with each other for her attention.

“It's still gross! But I've put up with weirder Kurashiki things before, this...kind of isn't the weirdest one,” Junpei told her when she asked.

“It makes you happy, and I know this ain't normal of us to begin with,” was Aoi's reasoning.

Neither of them would agree to the threesome, though, and acted like children about the bedsharing even though they still woke up touching each other after curling around her in the night. Or sometimes they woke up less easily, from nightmares and panic, and one night she caught Junpei's hand joining her in rubbing Aoi's back as he clung to her.


End file.
